Abstract

James Joyce’s interest in accessing the global through the core of the local makes him a particularly suggestive example for writers interested in a cosmopolitan vernacular, particularly for those writing, as Joyce did, from the margins of Europe. Postcolonial studies have extended Joyce criticism through new readings of the global multiplicity of his work and through study of the translations that brought Joyce to new readerships, but have only recently begun to examine writers outside of Europe and North America who both followed and challenged Joyce’s example. This article discusses Joyce’s global influence in the accounts of critics and novelists, including Mulk Raj Anand, Salman Rushdie, Derek Walcott and Orhan Pamuk. Attention to Joyce as a postcolonial writer should serve to call attention to other international writers, rather than to overwrite them; the effect should be centripetal and should expand and dislocate our ideas of influence rather than situate them in a stable centre. Joyce’s global circulation, reception, imitation and adaptation comprises an odyssey of reading engaged both with the revisioning of the literary past and the future of literary studies.